Executives Asked to Help County Find Ways to Pay

A new task force of prominent Orange County business executives was told Thursday that the county is strapped for money to solve transportation, jail, housing, pollution and other problems, and was asked to help find new ways to pay for county government services.

The Economic Advisory Task Force was created by Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder--over the objections of some other board members--to help get private businesses involved in the county budget problems.

“County government is in trouble--serious trouble,” Wieder told the breakfast meeting in Costa Mesa. “I think you do have a stake in where we get future funding.”

In an overview of the county’s fiscal picture, Associate County Administrator Murry Cable told the group that things look bleak: The county’s cash reserves are at dangerous levels; federal revenue sharing grants have been eliminated and, once again, the county doesn’t anticipate enough money to balance the budget for the next fiscal year beginning in July.

“We will start next year in a difficult situation,” Cable said.

Wieder said the committee will produce a report on suggestions for improving the county’s economic future within 6 months.

Thursday’s meeting included about 20 executives from the fields of retail, medicine, manufacturing, academia, finance, labor and development. They commented on the government-related difficulties facing their own realms. Most focused on the lack of affordable housing and transportation.

“We have made a conscious decision not to add staff” in Orange County, partly because of housing and traffic problems, said Charles Rinehart, president of AVCO Financial Services.

Housing Prices

Marty Wilkstrom, regional manager for Nordstrom, said, “Relocating executives to Southern California is very difficult” because of housing prices.

Rinehart said other places share the same problems and suggested seeing what’s being done elsewhere. “Look at Manhattan--they’re at the far end of the spectrum--but they also have high housing costs and transportation problems, and they’ve put together a work force of millions and millions.”

Dennis Aigner, dean of the graduate school of management at UC Irvine, said: “I don’t look at the companies moving out (of Orange County) as totally negative. Since this is an entrepreneurial hotbed, you can look at this as an export industry and provide an infrastructure that would make that work better.”

Other task force members include Gary Hunt, senior vice president of the Irvine Co.; Pat Krone, chairman of the Orange County Chamber of Commerce; Mary Yunt, executive secretary of the Orange County Labor Council, and Dr. Robert Gumbiner, president of FHP Inc.

Also attending the meeting was Joe Cucchiara, a consultant for the County Supervisors Assn. of California. Responding to concerns brought up by task force members, he said: “Your county government cannot effectively respond to those problems because they don’t have the money. The county’s problems are your problems.”

Cucchiara, a former Santa Cruz County supervisor, said Orange County is the first county to host a meeting with business leaders to discuss its budget problems.

He also said the county supervisors association is researching the possibility of a statewide ballot measure in 1990 to bail out county governments. Without it, he said, it is possible that the 58 county governments in California could collapse.

Future ‘on the Line’

“We are living in a time when the future of county government is on the line,” he said. “Think of having to get all of your local troubles resolved at a regional or state level. I think it would be difficult or impossible.”

Cable outlined several difficulties in the Orange County budget:

- The county expects to face a shortfall of several million dollars in the fiscal year beginning this July because its projections for revenues are short of its estimated costs.

- The annual federal revenue sharing money available to the county--which was more than $40 million in 1985--is less than $50,000 this year.

- The county’s cash reserves are down to $15 million, below the level recommended by credit rating agencies for financial integrity.

Last year, Wieder suggested privately that she would create the new task force in her last act as chairman of the board of supervisors before the job was turned over to Supervisor Thomas F. Riley at the beginning of the year.

When she floated the idea, however, there was a swift and negative response from the other supervisors. None of the other supervisors endorsed the committee and so, technically, Wieder created the task force as an advisory group to herself.

Generally, the other supervisors complained that the input of business leaders could be a distraction or a burden as the government’s staff wrestles with difficult financial problems. Some said they considered it a job that the government should resolve by itself, without involving the private sector.

Wieder said after the meeting: “I didn’t want to impose our problems on the community businesses without their input. They will be impacted.”

Riley, meanwhile, on Thursday repeated his doubts about the value of such a task force.

“I was concerned about the productivity that is possible here,” he said. “When you do a committee, there should be a real serious consideration to the benefits that are going to happen.”